Early Muslim Polemic against Christianity: Abu 'Isa al-Warraq's "Against the Incarnation.".

• Author: Reynolds, Gabriel Said
• Position: Book Review

Early Muslim Polemic against Christianity: Abu 'Isa al-Warraq's "Against the Incarnation." By DAVID THOMAS. University of Cambridge Oriental Publications, no. 59. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2002. Pp. x + 314. $65.

The response of the Jacobite (West Syrian) Christian theologian Yahya b. 'Adi (d. 362/972) to the polemic of the heterodox Mu'tazili Abu 'Isa al-Warraq (d. ca. 247/861, see pp. 23-25) has long been recognized as an exceptionally important example of Muslim-Christian theological interaction. Already in the early twentieth century A. Perier planned to publish a complete edition of this work in two parts (Trinity and Incarnation), when his manuscript was destroyed during the First World War. (1) A. Abel later edited Yahya's quotations of Abu 'Isa in the chapter on the Incarnation. (2) In 1987 E. Platti edited and translated the full text of this chapter in Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (vols. 490-91). Five years later D. Thomas edited and translated Yahya's quotations of Abu 'Isa in the chapter on the Trinity. (3) Thomas has now returned to the chapter on the Incarnation and, like Abel, edited and translated only the quotations of Abu 'Isa therein, adding to it his quotations in the introductory section at the opening of the chapter on the Trinity. Thomas also provides a substantial introduction to the context, life, and thought of Abu 'Isa.

The previous history of work on this text, however, compels a reviewer to consider whether Thomas' volume is redundant. As Thomas himself graciously acknowledges (p. x), the edition of Platti is excellent (indeed his apparatus criticus is more complete than that of Thomas); Platti's translation is no worse. On the other hand, Thomas' translation is into English, and thus the thought of Abu 'Isa is made accessible to students and a more general audience who may not know French. Moreover, Thomas, unlike Platti, does not include the responses of Yahya to Abu 'Isa in his work. He thereby presents an isolated exposition of Abu 'Isa's doctrine. The virtue of this exposition is increased by the fact that Abu 'Isa's scholarly corpus is otherwise lost. Moreover, Abu 'Isa's reputation as a heretic has kept him from receiving the scholarly attention that he clearly deserves, a point made forcefully by Abdelmajid Charfi. (4)

However, if Thomas' decision to exclude the responses of Yahya distinguishes his work from that of Platti, this distinction comes at a cost. Indeed, part of the value of this treaty is precisely in its presentation of Yahya's responses to Abu 'Isa, i.e., in the scene of a philosophically minded Christian theologian wrestling with the daunting intellectual challenges of his Muslim opponent. Few other works from this period present such a dramatic Muslim-Christian encounter. In Thomas' book we hear the lines of only one of the protagonists and, consequently, the drama is considerably reduced.

There is another problem here: do we actually hear all of Abu 'Isa's lines and do we hear them accurately? Thomas himself admits (p. 61) that Yahya does not record all of Abu 'Isa's work. At the same time, he argues that Yahya generally records Abu 'Isa's views in a faithful manner.

Finally, the present work is rendered a bit awkward by the fact that Thomas has...